Monthly Archives: November 2013

Several new oral histories have been taken, and more are planned. They are being transcribed and will be placed on the web site and in West Glamorgan Archives.

Selections of the recordings will be put on the web site.

New photographs of White Rock have been discovered. When we have completed their interpretation they will also be placed in the public domain.

Images sourced from the Royal Commission have been examined and considerable interpretation added. The images and interpretation will be on the web site shortly, and the additional information will be returned to the Royal Commission.

Images kindly supplied by Swansea Museum are currently being examined by the team and will also be put on view.

A large number of documents have been discovered in West Glamorgan Archives and the Richard Burton Archives. These are already proving a rich source of new information. A copy of the 1736 White Rock lease is on display in the Connected Communities Exhibition at the National Waterfront Museum. Two of our student volunteers are transcribing the lease.

Two boxes of White Rock memorabilia found in the Richard Burton Archives are generating great excitement.

A user community for the android Digital Trails app is being recruited both in Wales and in England. Two groups of Swansea University Computer Science MEng students are developing the app further as their first year master’s project. An MSc student is researching the Digital Trails user experience.

An iPad app is under development, bringing together the various strands of research and other work in an interactive format.

Three Swansea University history students have joined the team for 2013 / 2014. In addition to research, they will take on the organisation of White Rock events.

The White Rock schools pack has been finalised.

Discussions on restoring the site to its 1990s condition are continuing with CADW and Swansea Council. It is hoped the first clearance, along the river bank, will be carried out early in the New Year.

We are delighted to present our new programme of professional training courses in the historic environment. You can find full details of each course on our website at www.conted.ox.ac.uk/pthe, or via the links below. We very much hope you will find something here to interest you and we look forward to seeing you at Rewley House again soon.

Anne Dodd
Course Programmer

Please see our 2014 courses as listed below. Click on each link to see full course details.
Investigating First World War Archaeological & Architectural Legacies
Wednesday 5 February 2014www.conted.ox.ac.uk/V400-326

Just a quick note to ask (if you do such things) for a final social media push for the Swansea Bay City of Culture bid. I know some of you will have done some if not all of this, so ignore if you have!

Our Facebook and Twitter numbers compare well with the other cities, but Hull are a little way ahead and we want to make up some ground on them if we can – it’s not a beauty parade and the decision will go on the bid itself, but social media is one visible demonstration to the panel of public support. We’ve had great interaction and support already on there, but if we can get a further bump before Friday that would be great.

So, first and foremost if you can please go to www.facebook.com/swanseabay2017 and ‘like’ and ‘share’ things as they pop up, and also if you can follow @swanseabay_2017 on Twitter and retweet things as they come out. If you tweet about Swansea Bay culture (whatever that is to you) then if you can use the #cwtchthebid hashtag that would be great.

Secondly, the DCMS (the government department that runs the competition) has featured each of the 4 shortlisted cities and this week it is Swansea Bay’s turn as the last of the 4. Their Facebook page can be found at: www.facebook.com/dcmsgovuk – if you can ‘like’ things they’re posting about Swansea in the next day or two and post nice comments, or send them a tweet (@DCMS) ideally with a pic that shows off our culture. If you can please use the hashtag #cwtchthebid and (if there’s room) also include @swanseabay_2017 too. Again, to make it count, we need that before Friday.

Finally, the bid website: www.swanseabay2017.co.uk has a ‘Cwtch Culture’ section, where there’s a map and you can post your Swansea Bay culture on it. Grateful if you have time to do that too (note that your posts don’t appear straightaway as a spam-prevention measure!).

The winner will be announced next Wednesday morning, 20th November, on breakfast TV (we won’t have any advance notice so we will know the outcome at the same time as it’s announced to the general public). We haven’t been told the time of the announcement of the winner by the Minister but we expect it to be around 8.30am that day.

Please do circulate this to anyone you want. Thanks for your help –I hope our efforts meet expectations, but win or lose it has certainly raised the profile of the region, and it’s been an exciting ride!

A rare glimpse of Victorian London’s working class captured by a street photographer.
“In or around 1877, photography was mainly about beautiful landscapes or portraits of the wealthy, but these images [photographer John] Thomson deliberately set out to take were those of the Victorian underclass,” John Trevers of auctioneers Dominic Winter told NBC News. “This was the first time those in abject poverty scratching out a living on the streets of London were photographed.”
“This was a pioneering work of social documentation,” he added.
See the photographs and the full story at http://nbcnews.to/18aVtMI

The British Library has challenged video game design students to turn old maps and engravings from its collection into virtual worlds. The students combined maps from the library’s collection with games company Crytex’s CryEngine to create the 3D environments. The Off the Map competition was part of video game festival GameCity held in Nottingham.

‘With the approaching centenary of the First World War, there has never been a more appropriate time to research this war and the people involved. Today we are launching a dedicated First World War portal, bringing together all of The National Archives’ First World War resources in a single place.’

John Hugh Thomas OBE on A Swansea Squire: Music Making in 19th-Century Swansea. This is a joint event with The Friends of Swansea Festival of Music and the Arts. 11.00 Saturday 16 November at the National Waterfront Museum – admission free. haswansea.org.uk.